The fests have started, and Make Lehigh Valley has been out and about. On March 23, we participated in TWO different events for New Jersey Maker Day- one at a library in Clinton, and another at a library in Warren county.

Printmaking with laser-cut woodblocks

Learning to solder

Then on Saturday, May 4, we were at the Banana Factory in Bethlehem for the South Side Arts & Music Festival.

Origami cicadas... with light-up eyes!

We always have a great time at these events, and the activities are a lot of fun for everybody. We're looking forward to more events coming up soon- keep watching for info!

Our friends at The Alternative Gallery in Allentown invited us to participate at ArtsFest this year, and we're so glad they did! It was an amazing weekend of art, music, and food. We were set up in the Voyager Tent, a location specifically for celebrating the intersection of Art and Technology. And with two different hands-on activities, we were busy all day long.

Big thanks to all our members who came out to help!

"Learn to Solder" is always a hit. It's so great to see someone's face light up when they complete their first working circuit.

And Katie's "Laser-cut Cross Stitch" was a wonderful addition. This project puts a modern spin on a very old craft, using laser-cut wood instead of fabric.

We met a ton of amazing people and had a great time all weekend. Can't wait to do it all again next year!

So it's been a month and there's a whole lot going on; brace yourselves for an influx of information.

Before we dive in, remember that this coming Saturday July 29th LVTech is visiting the space! The LVTech Family Field Trip event starts at 11:30AM and will include some short presentations, food, activities, projects to look at, etc. You can get more information and RSVP to the Meetup event here or here.

The board meeting was on Wednesday July 12th (minutes here, with new format by our Secretary Will!) and it was another busy one. We made our new 3D printer decision and have purchased a KL Services Fablicator! Once delivered, there will be a training held on the unit at the space on a weeknight evening around 6PM. The exact date will be posted here and to the list, etc so the most folks possible can attend. Many thanks to a number of members who stepped up and donated money to help us afford this - Ed, Will, Jared, Chris, Danny, Jonas and Richard.

After a very successful Space Pride Day on Saturday 7/8, we elected to purchase some other must-haves for the space: A 6' Werner step ladder to assist with getting to high shelves, two Bosch drill/drivers and a Makita drill driver to replace our terrible Harbor Freight unit, an upright vacuum for the lounge, and a floor attachment for our shop vac so we can keep the floor in the rest of the shop tip top. I also don't think I mentioned that we got a brand new, super quiet air compressor compliments of Ed and Jared a short while ago.

We've been getting a lot of questions about World Maker Faire this year and we've decided we WILL be running the trip! We reserved a bus and got our group discount code. We'll be leaving Saturday September 23rd at 8AM and adult tickets wil be $75, with discounts for children and students available. More info to come very soon. Tickets will be available for purchase via an Eventbrite event that will be up once everything is finalized.

At member request, we've also joined our Slack and IRC channels! All the traffic in either place is relayed to the other. Our IRC channel is #makelv on Freenode, and members can request an invite to our Slack via email to the list or by contacting a member, tweet at us, or generally getting hold of us in any way

I have a mess of pictures to post from the past few weeks so look for that soon!

Member Katie has started a blog on her site Crafty Kitsurou about her (mis)adventures in using our laser cutter. Katie is doing really cool stuff with halftones and engraving photos that we've pictured here in the past month or so. Check it out below!

I thought maybe I'd try a new title as our updates turn out to be a little less frequent than weekly Plus that's our twitter thing.. see what I did there?

The newly-appointed board met for the first time on 6/14 and it was certainly a busy meeting. You can take a look at the complete minutes here. Some important highlights: We've been discussing the purchase of a new 3D Printer for the space, and are trying to narrow the field selection-wise as well as determine how much we're going to spend. We've fired off a discussion on our mailing list (join!) and are hoping to get some consensus prior to our 7/12 meeting at which we're planning to make the purchase.

(sad face)

We also scheduled our next Space Pride Day for Saturday, July 8th beginning at 12PM. We use these days to clean up and improve the space as a group. At some point during the day MakeLV will be buying everyone lunch!

We had a pretty small crowd at the 6/15 Open Hack, but here is what happened Thursday 6/22!

A busy Open Hack, Katie is burning photos into wood and making some other small ornaments, Ed is modeling a trailer for his quad and golf cart in SolidWorks, Jeff is troubleshooting an inexpensive CNC controller he picked up for a robotics project, and Twilly is working on a Frankenstein skirt.

I'm batting 1.000 on putting up some news on a weekly basis, aren't I? It's been a busy few weeks at the space; we had our Annual Meeting, BBQ and Elections on Saturday May 20th (minutes here) which was a ton of fun and some well-attended Open Hacks on those few Thursday nights in there.

In case you missed it, our new Board of Directors is as follows: President Jared Steckel, Quartermaster Ed Kilburn, Secretary Will Weik, Treasurer Jonas Wood and Director of Public Relations Danny Mardis. All honors and thanks to Mark Benning (Former President) and Alex Cloak (former Quartermaster) for their service and many accomplishments this past year.

Danny, Will, Ed and Jared

Here's some more from a few nights around the space!

A bustling Open Hack night, Dave is building a desktop air conditioner for his desk at work out of some spare parts lying around, tron is reclaiming some valuable parts from some electronics scrap, mobius is working on rebuilding an old air compressor, Jonas is scrapping an old refrigerator (not to worry, we have refrigerant reclamation equipment!), Jeff shows a power connection and some wiring he's made up for his awesome sign on the steps, and Ralph troubleshoots (successfully!) a partially-functional LED strip.

One of the most common things we hear from visitors and newcomers is that we don't update our blog and there aren't any pictures of what goes on here, etc. I don't want to make all sorts of commitments I won't keep, but I recently got my first DSLR and am enjoying taking photos of whats going on. So, for the first time in years, here are some actual pictures from this week at MakeLV. From left to right are the descriptions below. I promise to learn a nicer way to throw these into a post with descriptions, honest 😉

Photon got an old Pentium 166 loaded up with DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11, and a copy of ImpuleTracker and was playing some old MOD audio files.

Mobius was working on our audio system in the space, adding a 15" Dayton Audio 350W (RMS) sub in a custom-built folded horn box that stands waist high.

Photon jumped in on the stereo work and replaced the caps in an Altec Lansing single-channel 31-band EQ destined for the sub.

Ed started assembly on an enclosure and bench for the CNC mill he and Tronwizard have been working on.

Ed and Ben are working on some Python on a Raspberry Pi 3 which is using the pygame library to produce some graphics for an upcoming project.

MakeLV is proud to announce that we are offering T-Shirts for sale to members and non-members. Available by pick-up only, the shirts are on a soft, light material, and cost $15. Check the sidebar for ordering information.

We're excited for our annual bus trip to World Maker Faire in NYC, come ride with Make Lehigh Valley!

We have a luxury coach reserved and will be leaving from DaVinci Science Center at 8AM on Saturday October 1st to head to NYSCI in Queens for the Faire. You can park in the DaVinci lot while we're gone, and we'll be returning there around 10PM the same day.

Details and tickets available at the link below. Purchase your tickets by September 29th 2016 at 6PM!

We're a community of makers, hackers and creatives in Allentown, Bethlehem and the rest of the Lehigh Valley who are convinced that we can do even cooler things by interacting with other people who are doing cool things.